Tuesday, June 30, 2009

I have put together a dormant list that has pictures of the stamp sets and wheels. It is in the Handy Tools section on the right side of my blog, or you can just CLICK HERE to view it. I think it is so much easier to know which sets are which if you have a picture. These sets will be available for purchase in addition to all the wonderful items in the new catalog. The new Idea Book & Catalog will go live tomorrow and I will be featuring items from it over the next few weeks. If you want to book a new catalog party, get in touch with me now and get it on my calendar. Here's a sneaky peek at the cover:

I will also be posting the "recipe" pages for all the projects that appear in the new catalog as soon as SU makes it available. This will allow you to find out exactly what you need to make all the fun projects that you see in the new Idea Book & Catalog!

I'll be back in creative mode real soon. Look for a tutorial on this month's Christmas card later in the week and be sure to stop by and check out the new sketch challenge on the Kaboodle Doodles Challenge blog.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

This month, Tracey posed a great challenge for us. Our Christmas cards needed to be made with a unique fold! Here's what I came up with:

Here's the inside view:

Here they all are together!

I got my new Scarlet Jewell paper from PTI and it reminded me of the retired designer paper Holiday Thyme that I have been hoarding. Well, I dug into the old stash and decided it was time to use it! The sentiment and snowflakes on the front are from the new hostess set Christmas Punch from Stampin' Up! I am a total sucker for punches and this set screamed at me out of the sneak peeks and I had to have it. The snowflakes fit the Boho Blossoms punch! Pretty cool! There's quite a few other stamps in the set too and they all go with the SU punches. I love that! Only a couple more days and I will be able to share more from the new catalog with you. Remember, if you want to book a party you need to get in touch with me soon. I will be on the road from July 21 until Aug. 4 so we should get your booking done now!

Thanks for visiting. Today is Kael and Natalie's birthday party and I am hoping we don't have a repeat of the weather that has plagued us every afternoon this week. They are having a Sponge Bob bouncy house and I am certain that everyone will have a great time.

Friday, June 26, 2009

I am a huge fan of Michelle Rodgers (Stamper's Dream) and today is her birthday! I made this card for her to say Happy Birthday Michelle! Stop on by and visit her fabulous blog and leave her a bit of birthday love!

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I am really loving this year's new in-color colors from Stampin' Up! I'm making some sample rings and I'll have some pix of those to post on Friday. On Thursday I will have a slideshow of all of our new catalog swaps from Wednesday night too! It's been a really busy couple of weeks and hopefully I will get caught up with myself soon!

We were invited to a concert recently (Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood - was really great too) and I wanted a card for our gracious host and hostess. I think they like it! We all had a wonderful time and the music was wonderful - those two 60 somethings can sure rock out!

Sunday, June 21, 2009

I'm making a pack of cards to use at workshops using this set to show just how versatile it is. Here's some of the cards:

My downline group is going to work on making things that will help us show our customers how versatile SU's sets can be. Three of us are having a New Catalog Release party on July 18, so I will be working on some displays to show off all of the fun new stuff in the new catalog. I am so happy that SU has gone to a once a year catalog again - I get a whole year to play with these great stamps!

Saturday, June 20, 2009

I'm participating in a new catalog swap with my fellow downline members. We each picked a set and we're making 12 cards to swap. I picked Autumn Days and got some inspiration from Joanne at Sleepy in Seattle. Here's my card:

I paper pierced along the bottom of the card, something I don't often do, but I think it turned out fine and it was fun too!

I'll have some more samples from this set to show you tomorrow. Today we're headed to the lake to take Kael and Natalie sailing (their parents are coming along too). We've also loaded the kayaks on top of the car and I am going to try out the new knee! The kids like to take a ride in them too so hopefully the weather wil hold up. Tonight is our sail club's annual Summer Sailstice celebration and we will sail out onto the lake and "raft up" for a little celebration. In a raft up, you tie all your boats together and form a raft. You can walk from boat to boat and we all cook up our favorite goodies and visit each other's boats. It's fun. Little scary sailing back to the slip in the dark, but lots of fun. We'll spend the night on the boat and sail a bit in the morning and then head home. We are going to see Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood tomorrow night! Box seats to boot!

Friday, June 19, 2009

I love challenges and this week I tried to combine Tuesdays color challenge and Wednesdays sketch challenge. I missed the color challenge a bit as I used vanilla instead of white, but I like it anyway!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

It's time for the reveal of the cards in Kim's latest game of card tag. Click here to see the whole shebang!

Here's my entry:

I am so in love with this dp from SU. It's part of the level 3 hostess bundle. And how about these new in-colors? Totally yummy! I am a huge ribbon fan (bordering on obsessed if I'm really honest about it) and I was so glad when SU came out with this dotted swiss ribbon in this year's in-colors. I am loving everything about the new catalog coming on July 1! If you want to book a workshop with me, let me know soon as July is getting full!

There will be a New Catalog Release party on July 18 in Longmont featuring make and takes from myself, Pat Journeay and Roberta Courtney. If you've ever attended one of our group workshops, you know how much fun they can be. Great door prizes and wonderful cards to make. We will be featuring items from the new catalog! Email me if you would like more information about this workshop.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

You all know by now that I love letting the geek side of me play with the creative side of me. These cards are a combination of stamped images, digital images and computer generated sentiments. Needless to say - I had a ball! The quotes on the card came from an absolutely wonderful resource on the Oh My Crafts blog that has lots and lots of quotes all sorted by subject. Here is the link.

These cards were so much fun to make. The fish image is the strip of 3 at the bottom of the inside of the last card. The joy of digital images is that you can really do so much with them. I split out each fish and saved them and then edited them making a mirror image and saved those. I now have a strip of three fish and six more singe fish! Fun, fun, fun! All three of these disappeared out of my card basket at work within an hour!

Thanks so much for visiting! Tomorrow is the deadline for my Courtney's closet card and i will be posting it in the morning. I used some new rubber from DogGone Stamps on it and I have to tell you that I really like them and the customer service is absolutely fantastic. My order came really fast and when I had a problem it was resolved immediately. Brian - cudos to you for doing such a bang up job! Come back tomorrow and see my card!

Congrats Adrienne! I've sent you an email asking for your snail mail address so I can get this off to you!Thanks everyone for all your wonderful comments! I'll be back a bit later with some Father's Day hybrid cards to share.

I think I'll make it a little more open this time around - you get one chance for a comment left on this post and another if you post it on your blog and come back and leave me a link! I will draw a name on Wednesday, June 17.

This post will stay at the top of my blog, so if you want to see what I'm up to day to day, just scroll down!

Thanks for visiting and thanks so much for all of your support and encouragement over this past year+! I really appreciate you all!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

You almost can't see the brown of the cattail as it is covered with stickles, but it's there! Digital image is on Whisper White and is from Dustin Pike. Card base is Brocade Blue with Ballet Blue and Bashful Blue. DP is from pcCrafters (of course)! Sentiment is computer generated and punched with the Word Window punch and mounted on the new label punch from SU in Certainly Celery. Corners of the image panel were punches with one of those cute round squeezable punches from Fiskars. Other corners were rounded with a corner rounder from SU.

We announced three new design team members on the Kaboodle Doodles Challenge blog today. You should stop over and check it out! There promises to be some good things coming on that blog - watch and see!

Thanks for visiting today - blog candy winner tomorrow so be sure to stop back and find out if you are the lucky winner!

Well the girls came over to stamp last night and after quite a bit of ogling of the new catalog, we got down to business. I need a bit of help with designing a challenge over on the Kaboodle Doodles Challenge blog and Diane was a real trooper and stepped in to help out. It is a color challenge and you can take a look by hopping on over to the blog, but here's the cards we made.

Mine:

Diane's:

Sabrina got this marvelous new sunflower stamp and inked it up to make this gorgeous creation.

Thanks for visiting. I'll have some hybrid Father's Day cards to show you tomorrow - you all know how much I like to combine my tech side with my creative side!

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Well, it was a busy weekend. I did manage to make a couple of cards though.

Picked up some new edge punches and my first Quick Kutz die - a ladybug! The paper on the Father's Day card is from a digi kit by Lizzie Anne and the paper on the second is from the level 3 bundle from the new SU catalog - absolutely gorgeous fantastic paper! The butterflies were cut from the bitty dots papers from PTI.

Hopefully, I will have some pictures of our day on the boat today with the twins and their baby brother. The weather held out until mid afternoon so we got some good sailing in and anchored and had lunch and no one fell overboard.

Thanks so much for visiting. The Monday night stampers are getting together tomorrow night to play with some of my new toys so I should have some eye candy for you all after that.

Friday, June 12, 2009

As always, we had a wonderful and productive meeting yesterday. We met at the home of our wonderful fearless leader Roselyn. Much as I would love it if this were my kitchen - it's hers. Here's some pix of the gals in action:

The catalog was (naturally) the center of attention.But we were busy bees making our cards too.Here's a slideshow of all the swap cards!

Thanks for visiting. I played in another round of card tag yesterday, so as soon as this round is complete I'll share my card and give you a link so you can check out all the other cards.

There are so many new fun things coming up in the new catalog! If you want to book a workshop with me in July, I still have openings - just email me and we'll set it up! My email address is linked on the left side of my blog.

I really look forward to these meetings so much as all of these gals are so talented and inspirational. I am doing a make & take too, but haven't figured it out quite yet. I want to use one of the new sets that Mr. Brown so kindly delivered yesterday - YAY! The new colors are great and the new sets I got will be so much fun to play with. The catalog - OMG - I think I'm going to have some very happy customers later this month! Lots and lots of fun new stuff and lots of my favorites from the recent mini showing up to play too! I always get very attached to the sets in the mini catalogs and so I was really happy to see some of my favorites getting a return engagement! A couple new punches to round things out and I am a happy, happy stamper! I will be giving you some sneak peeks at some of the new stuff over the next few weeks and the new catalog goes live on July 1!

Busy week this week - new Stamin' Up! goodies arriving today, blog candy coming tonight, June downline meeting on Thursday and all the usual fun things like - work. Sunburn is a bit better this morning and I'm headed to the pool to get a little exercise on the old knee. I am really hoping to try getting in the kayak this weekend! The weather looks like it might just stay nice the whole weekend - hopefully no more afternoon tornados!

Well, the blog went over 25k while I was up at the lake getting toasted! Need to bump up the sunscreen level next weekend - definitely! So, at any rate, there is blog candy coming this week to celebrate! 500+ posts and 25k+ hits! WOW - who would have thought that I'd last at this blogging thing long enough to hit these milestones! Not me, that's for sure. It's been a whole lot more fun than I ever imagined it could be thanks to all of YOU! Check in later in the week and see what I come up with!

Saturday, June 6, 2009

and with a little photoshop type magic, make some dp out of it. Once I got that done and printed, I started punching and stamping and embossing and even though I have five cards, I still have a pile of stuff left over to play with some more!I'm writing this post after spending the whole day with my 5 year old grandson celebrating his 5th birthday - needless to say I may not be making a great deal of sense. We're headed to the lake for the regatta and I'm scheduling this to post while we're gone. We'll be back Sunday afternoon, probably wiped out and a bit crispy around the edges!

Libby - pick the one you like best for the challenge - I can't choose!